Скачать или смотреть White-winged Choughs foraging – Capertee Valley

These White-winged Choughs (Corcorax melanorhamphos) were filmed in July and August 2018 in the Capertee Valley, NSW. The exact location is a private property that has a mix of open forest (on higher slopes), woodland and larger open spaces in the form of grassland with pockets of shrubbery (e.g. acacias). It used to be part of a working farm but underwent extensive habitat restoration over a couple of decades. Visit    • Bird Diversity after Habitat Restoration –...   for more information on the site. All of the footage came from the general area shown in the first photo. The third photo was taken in May.

We have also seen these birds elsewhere in the valley, including paddocks. In all cases though they are never far from trees. While White-winged Choughs spend much of their day foraging on the ground, they need trees for protection (when disturbed), resting, roosting, nesting and for leaf litter (which increases the number of invertebrates). As you can see in this video, they also probe and dig into topsoil. They are quite systematic in their foraging and work in groups with a spread-out formation. (Hence the camera follows just one bird.) On this particular site we have seen 5 – 10 choughs at a time. The typical size of a group or clan is around 5 – 20. (Sometimes only a couple of birds are visible, especially when they are hidden in the trees.) These groups consist of a breeding pair and previous offspring (who aren’t sexually mature until four years old). Here’s a video of some choughs preening together in a woodland reserve in the outer suburbs of Sydney.    • White-winged Chough clan preening together   For more information on these fascinating birds visit http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/speci... Also go to https://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Co... to hear their various calls.